New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC, houses the Office of Management and Budget Are we seeing a shift in Obama’s priorities away from using the regulatory review process to avoid picking fights with special interests? It appears that, under the new administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the backlog [...]
The rate at which methane leaks into the atmosphere from natural gas production “is a critical question that we must answer,” say Reps. Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush, who have called on the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to hold hearings on this issue. Considering the Obama administration’s full-tilt support for natural gas [...]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has posted for public comment EPA’s draft Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plans for 7 National Programs and 10 Regions. Other agencies should follow EPA’s example and solicit public review of their plans, which should become part of the basis of a meaningful national climate change preparedness process. […]
President Obama’s Executive Order “Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change” takes a step on implementing the administration’s Climate Action Plan issued in June. This Part 2 of our summary covers Federal Agency Planning for Climate Change Related Risk and the creation of a government-wide Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and a State, Local, [...]
“Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change,” a presidential Executive Order issued November 1, continues the development of a national climate change preparedness process, which we first called for in March 2008, back in the Bush-Cheney climate policy dark ages. It has taken 25 years – since the global warming problem was first [...]
What is the U.S. Climate Action Report? Why is the 6th Climate Action Report important? What happens next with the public review draft? Which countries submit National Communications to the UNFCCC? When were previous National Communications submitted? What are the required contents? What are the new Biennial Reports and their required contents? Answers to these questions and more follow. […]
The draft Sixth Climate Action Report, posted by the U.S. State Department today for a 28-day public review and comment period, contains the U.S. Government’s most detailed discussion of its actions to address climate change. This report, required every four years under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, projects U.S. greenhouse gas emissions assuming existing [...]
New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC, houses the Office of Management and Budget The editorial board of the New York Times called out the Obama administration for its practice of allowing the White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to obstruct environmental, health, and safety protections by blocking proposed federal [...]
President Obama has given the first major address ever given by a U.S. president to the American people focusing on the implications of global climate change and actions needed to deal with it. Breaking a more than three-year near-silence on climate change, President Obama yesterday rolled out a multifaceted climate change action plan. Now the [...]
“This Tuesday, I’ll lay out my vision for … a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it,” the president said today via White House Twitter feed. Unofficial sources say the President’s plan includes EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from existing power [...]